Robot Dialogs

I've finished Puzzle Box #2 (see Part 1 of this design). Here are some details from the build. I started by using a planer to cut all the 1.1x0.23 inch lattice trim pieces (from Home Depot) down to 1.1 x 0.2" inches (to fit the design). The lattice stock comes in 13 foot pieces, I cut those down to 6.5 feet before leaving the store. Each piece in the bill of materials was cut very precisely to match the drawing. Because pieces overlap everywhere their was very little room for error (I basically went for +/-0.01 inches tolerance). Many pieces were cut three at a time. All told there were over 140 pieces. I cut a few extra of each piece because the saw would occasionally chew up an end, or a piece would have cracks or knots. I worked on bite-sized chunks at a time, it was a complicated assembly process because I had to follow the design exactly in order to have the correct piece overlapping when larger pieces got glued together. Everything is held together by Elmer...

I'm working on a second wooden puzzle box... It has taken forever to get the design right in Sketchup ( five six attempts)...trying to minimize the number of different components while only using a single type of wood... 1.1 inch x 0.2 inch trim. I'll keep taking pictures as I go and make another post later. This design is open source, go nuts. The Sketchup file is available here . I've gotten the design down to 21 different piece lengths. A bill of materials made using the CutList plugin for Sketchup is here . Final thought: I hate the lumber industry. If you say a piece of wood measures 1.25 by .25 inches, how the hell do you get off selling something not even close to that size? At what point did gross inaccuracy become okay?

Time for another post not about robots... Most projects are on the back burner because I've been poking about with an Ubuntu Server, Drupal and CiviCRM for CCCKC . I decided to make some coasters as a gift a family member. I went to Michaels to pick up the wood circle blanks, and Hobby Lobby had 4 inch cork coasters. I used one coat of stain before using the method I've described here to do the knot designs. This coat keeps the Sharpie ink from bleeding too much. When the designs were done I used 2 more coats of the stain and glued the wood disks to the cork coasters. Pictures taken with my EVO and the Droid Tripod Mount (yes it works with the EVO too!). I'm still on the fence about the Gorilla Glue. Hopefully it holds...I'm not sure I used enough. I tested one of them overnight with a puddle of water on the stained surface and it seemed to be sufficiently water proof.

Okay...this doesn't even remotely fit the robotics theme of the site, but it's a weekend project/gift for a family member. The only rule at my family's gift exchange this year is that the gifts have to be "made". For me this is an excuse to kill a weekend with arts and crafts. I started with the idea of duplicating the brain teaser puzzle below. Original Duplicate Well that one was easy enough to make...unfortunately it's not as colorful as the original (couldn't find that kind of rope). While looking online at similar wooden brain teasers I saw a picture of a small wooden box. As it turned out the box had a maze inside with the intended goal of getting a small ball through the invisible maze. I was hooked. So I went back to Lowe's grabbed what I needed and got to work. It has some weird dimensions because I had the guys at Lowe's cut the top and bottom before I really had anything designed (I wish I had a table saw...). I've always loved drawi...